Aug 25
20100
commentsin Epistemology social sciences, Methodology
Tags Epistemological vigilance Sampling Stratified random sampling
Opting in a thoughtless way to attract participants for a study by the contacts we have in the social networks is a very bad sampling strategy that we can pay dearly. So dearly that it may invalidate the reliability and representativeness of the results. To opt for this strategy would be analogous to perform a snowball sampling when, on the contrary, the required strategy would be a random sampling.
Not everyone can be a social scientist. As not everyone can be a soccer player. The only people being really able to do social science or sociology are the socially uprooted as many cases demonstrate all along the history of the social sciences; that is, those who are not well integrated in its membership groups, and which do not have reference groups: these are characterized by having a habitus which, by socialization (some would call it "by nature"), is cognitively heterodox; i.e., socially critical.
Aug 25
20100
commentsin Epistemology social sciences, Social theory
Tags Epistemological break Pierre Bourdieu Self-analysis Social structure
The epistemological break is not a technical, non continuous and consciously planned process. It is an undecided and infinite social process determined essentially by social conditions affecting the individual. An effective epistemological break hardly can take place without performing previously a rupture with both the common and the cultivated thought. And doing this means breaking with the social groups which are the spokesmen of such thought patterns.
